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Worldgorger Dragon: From Vintage to Legacy

Today I am going to talk about something that I have advised against in the past, but for this deck I will make an exception. Worldgorger Dragon, which some of you may know, was unbanned in Legacy about two years ago. The card has been involved in a tier three Vintage deck for years, but has not been successfully ported into Legacy yet. Vintage has had this deck in recent years see reinventions. Vintage Dragon in recent years has looked a lot like this, which Mathew Murray Top 8d with a few months ago.

This deck has several differences from anything we can run in Legacy, but, because most of it is just access to things like power and Vintage staples, we can overcome most of the fundamental cards. The creature base remains the same, but we are going to run one Oona, Queen of the Fae to win at instant speed.

But I’m getting ahead of myself. I should explain the main engine of the deck. This deck functions by having Worldgorger Dragon loop in and out of play by being enchanted by Animated Dead or a similar effect. Worldgorger Dragon then loops infinitely, which allows you to make infinite mana and mill yourself using Bazaar of Baghdad. The goal in Legacy is to reanimate Oona, Queen of the Fae and win with infinite mana by milling them for 100 (it exiles to get around Emrakul) and have a bunch of Fairies. Also because this loop is infinite and cannot be stopped, if you have no other creatures in your graveyard, it does make whatever game it is a draw.

Now for the substitutions.

The first big one is replacing Bazaar of Baghdad, which is a fundamental part of the engine. The best replacement for this effect (because we are looking to effectively mill ourselves) is Nephalia Drownyard. The replacement is a little subpar, but still allows you to mill yourself. The main drawback is that it requires blue and black mana, but you can still go off turn two with an Underground Sea and a Nephalia Drownyard. We run more draw effects like Ponder and Brainstorm to make up for the lack of really powerful draw and tutors that they run in Vintage because we have no other option. And we also run Careful Study and Entomb to allow us the discard that Bazaar traditionally grants us.

Here is my list, which I have done quite a bit of testing with (and the deck definitely shows promise with the newer additions of Tasigur and Jace), but this deck is probably not ready for anything besides locals.

I, unfortunately, have not yet worked out a sideboard for this deck, but there are at least 4 auto-includes, Abrupt Decay and a Bayou to cast it. Graveyard hate is one thing that this deck crumbles to, but it can win almost as fast as Reanimator, so only universal Graveyard stoppage really stops you. Deathrite Shaman is very beatable mainly because of Necromancy, but Abrupt Decay definitely helps against it. There are three weak points of this deck that I have found so far: the first is the Mana Base, which is by far my biggest weakness as a deck builder and the required 4 Nephalia Drownyards does not make the job easier; the second is Jace, Vryn’s Prodigy, which if very good if you can tap it but often just gets killed before that can be done because the format is filled with cheap removal like Lightning Bolt and Swords to Plowshares; the third weakness is definitely Intuition. Intuition is definitely a super powerful card and lets you set up your combo very effectively because you can search for 2 Worldgorger Dragons and a third card that you want in your graveyard (like Oona). The biggest drawback of Intuition, however, is that it costs 3 mana. A lot of the time on turn 3 you are using a cantrip to find a land or another piece of the combo that you’re missing.

The deck performs well against the decks that you’d probably expect, which mainly is aggressive decks. The deck runs enough protection to make most combo decks a not miserable matchup, but still annoying. The worst matchup for this deck is probably Temur Delver or other Delver decks because a turn 1 Wasteland or Daze is this deck’s biggest weakness. Miracles is a fairly good matchup, which is a lot like Reanimator, but it does lose a little harder to a Swords to Plowshares or Terminus than most. I am going to continue to work on this deck because it has been my pet for quite some time and recently has become more and more viable. If I get my hand on 4 Underground Seas and can run dailies I will be updating this deck much more actively, but there is little more testing to do till then. The biggest thing to figure out currently is a replacement to Intuition that I like just as much or more because three mana continues to prove to be a lot.